Aligning Balance: The Role of Chiropractic Care in Managing Vertigo

Ask the Chiropractor-

Does chiropractic play a role in correcting vertigo?  Dr Hulsebus explains why it might and how we can tell.  #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

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- Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here, and welcome to another edition of "Ask the Chiropractor.""Ask the Chiropractor" is my little podcast that I do. When someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford Icehogs. Let's dive into it. Hi there. Dr. Brant. Welcome to another episode of "Ask the Chiropractor." So today I had a friend of mine reach out to me about somebody that they know, a coworker or another friend. Then a lot of times, you know as a joke is when you call the doctor and you say, "Hey, I'm asking about a friend of mine." We actually know it's about you. But this case, it's just kind of fun to say that. This actually was somebody that he knew, and this person had a question about vertigo. And this person knew that my friend knew me, so they asked my friend to ask me, and that's awesome. Because they didn't ask a medical doctor, they didn't ask a physical therapist, they didn't ask somebody else, they asked a chiropractor. And that's great because if you want to know the truth about chiropractic, that's why we have this podcast. So the question, can chiropractic help vertigo? Well, I'm going to go back and try to answer this the best way I know how to answer this because in some cases we can help vertigo. And let me explain how this works. You see the top two bones in your neck, the first one's called C1, we call it the atlas. And we call it the atlas because in Greek mythology, atlas carried the earth, right, on its back. So we called the atlas Because it's carrying the globe, the the skull on top of it. So we had the atlas vertebrae. The next one we have is called the axis. The axis is a pivot point for the atlas. So you can turn your head and tell people no. The C2 sits there and the C2 is a very unique body. The access is a very unique body because it has what I like to call little tree stump sticking up called the odontoid process. And what this does, it's actually a pivot point where people can turn their head right around there. So the C1's a giant ring, and the C2 has a little pivot point where it attaches to, it allows you to turn. Now those of you who are old enough to remember Christopher Reeve, Christopher Reeve broke that tree trunk into a spinal cord and that's how he ended up paralyzed. So this is a very, very important neurological area. This is also the area that Dr. Palmer, for many years of his life argued as the only place you actually need a chiropractic adjustment. You see, Dr. Palmer knew about the writing reflex, and how the body reacts. Again, the writing reflex says that my eyes always stay level no matter what. So if I kink my middle back, I will always try to level off somewhere else that keep my eyes level. I often tease if we had a camera on people, a slow motion camera, and somebody knocked them down on the way down, you'd be surprised the way your eyes stay level almost the entire way. Those are the muscles in your upper neck. These are the most highly innovative muscles in your entire body. They have 273 neuro connections per square millimeter, as compared to seventies in your TMJ to give you an idea. So these two bones move a lot. These two bones are involved in a lot of different things. One of the things in this area is called the vagus nerve. The vagus goes everywhere basically generically speaking from your neck to your belly button, and it's in charge of turning fight and flight off. You've all heard a fight and flight, the response that when you're under danger, fight and flight kicks in. So vagus nerve is the one that kind of turns all that off and helps you go back to being healthy again. People have vagus nerve problems, a lot of times their blood pressure goes up, and it stays up until they sleep. They also have poor quality of sleep. You adjust the top two bones in the neck, the vagus nerve gets happier, and then they go able to get out of fight and flight better and able to heal and repair themselves better. So Dr. Palmer started an entire division of chiropractic based just on these two bones, upper cervical care. And that's the very first adjustment we learned at Palmer College. How to deal a toggle recoil adjustment on the C1, C2. It's a very precise and exact adjustment on those two vertebras and those two vertebras only. And that's the first adjustment we learned when I went to Palmer College. And today that's still to at Palmer College. That's a staple at Palmer College, and I don't ever see it going anywhere. So today we sometimes you just might see me walking around the clinic carrying this giant metal headpiece in my hand, and that's what we're doing with that. We're using that for upper cervical care. So when people have upper cervical problems, besides the things like the up before, the blood pressure, and maybe problems sleeping, another common problem when people who have upper cervical issues is balance or vertigo. So, "If you have balance or vertigo, can chiropractic help me?" Well, so if your top two bones are misaligned, and we adjust those, certain people with certain types of vertigo do get better. Now, there's lots of different reasons people have vertigo. It can be all over the place. Does chiropractic fix all of them? come to the chiropractor with severe vertigo, gotten chiropractic care, and not always gotten relief from vertigo. However, there's a lot of people that go to the chiropractor with vertigo, get adjusted and feel a lot better afterwards. So what we do is we go in there, we adjust those two bones. Now how would we know if you're a candidate for this or not? We don't want to see you like 30 times and tell you,"Well, maybe if we just do it one more time it'll go." Well this is actually a pretty easy way to to figure this out. All we do is we take some x-rays off your upper neck. You'll come in the chiropractor, you'll stand up nice and tall, we'll have you open your mouth really wide, because your teeth actually block the the X-ray image. So, you'll stand there and you open your mouth real wide, and we'll take the X-ray, and we'll be able to see your C1, and C2, and on the X-ray, C1 and C2 are very, very easy to diagnose. And the C1 we have these two big masses in the left and right side. If one of them is larger than the other one, then we know it's rotated. It's larger because when it spins, it's an optical illusion of looking larger. And the next thing we look at, is we look at that tree stump at C2, at that spinous process, that little bumpy feel when you rub someone's back, is not dead centered to that tree stump, it's shifted left or it shifted right, then we know that there's an issue there, and we know this is an area that we can improve. So we will start to adjust these two areas and try to see if we can improve it. Now there's all different theories and explanations. And the different ways chiropractic can affect different types of vertigo. One of the ways that we know, is we help with the blood drainage coming out of the skull. So if you have a misalignment up there, it can literally cause like to clog the dam of the stuff trying to come out. And if we move that, a lot of times what happens is on the venous flow it comes back. That's how we help with lots and lots of headaches. I have a friend in Jacksonville, Florida with a motion MRI machine. So he's actually doing this type of upper cervical care under a motion MRI machine, so we can actually literally watch what happens with the adjustment. I think that's cool, but I'm kind of a nerd. So he does the adjustment. We watch the venous flow come out of the skull, come out the the blood that we've already used removed from the skull, and we watch people's vertigo improve with that. The other thing that's happens when they've done this adjustment up here, we've also seen the the midbrain. The cerebellar tonsils to be very specific. When you get adjusted to this, they just pop back into the skull. You're revolving the whiplash and the vertigo came afterwards, and we've actually been able to witness this happen, which I think is really cool. And then what happens when we do this, is the spinal fluid gets drained. A lot of times people will come up, and they'll be a little, Ooh. Boy, you really got my dizziness wrong now. And that'll, that'll happen. But what we'll notice is that, the spinal fluid drain's been returned. And this is, we see this a lot with concussions by the way. So if you've had a head injury, and you're experiencing vertigo afterwards, this one you might be suffering from. But again, we can see this on the x-ray, the misalignment up here, and whether or not that's a potential. Another area we'll do, I learned when I did my pediatrics course, is we can do what they call a cranial adjustment. We just put a little pressure behind your eyes and a certain pattern. It's not like we're going to actually like thrust into your skull. We just put a little pressure there. We're able to move things around too, that could be affecting the bones inside your skull, shifting, left, shifting right, that can actually put pressure on your inner ear causing the vertigo. Another common one that we see in here a lot is benign positional vertigo. Meaning that when I'm standing up nice and straight, I go down, and I come up, I go "Whoa, everything's off." And I move my position from laying down to standing up, turning real quick. This has a lot to do with crystals in the ears. So this is one that here in my office, then will do a couple of neck adjustments on you and then we will refer you to a physical therapist to help work those crystals out. This is a common one that we see again after a trauma or just over time. Because those little crystals start to accumulate over time. So there's lots of different types of vertigo, lots of different ones we help. Now most chiropractors should be able to show you those two bones misaligned. Should be able to demonstrate why you'd be a good candidate for upper cervical care, and hopefully that upper cervical care, can help relieve some of the symptoms of vertigo. Is there an adjustment that we say we do this and vertigo will go away? No. Does an adjustment when we working the upper two bones of your neck, the C1, C2, to help alleviate the pressure there to hopefully get rid of the vertigo. But again, there are lots and lots and lots of reasons people get vertigo. If you're going to the chiropractor, and you've already done let's say 10, 12 adjustments, and you're not experiencing any difference, that's a conversation to have with your chiropractor. Because there is a chance that your vertigo is coming from something else. Maybe inner ear damage, maybe something neural neurological inside your skull, and further imaging or testing is required. And I know I could speak of Illinois. In Illinois, I'm a primary healthcare physician and a lot of times we can order more advanced studies and images to see what's going on. The other thing you hear in my town after January, I believe we only have one ear, nose throat doctor. So I'm expecting to see a lot more people dealing with this coming to my office just for the simple fact that we're lacking options of other places to go at this point. So, can chiropractic help with vertigo? We're going to take a look at your C1, C2, and see if we can make a change. We may or may not do a cranial adjustment, and we may or may not find other symptoms that go with this. So lots of people have gone to the chiropractor, gotten their upper cervicals adjusted, there's C1, C2, and gotten relief from vertigo. Not a hundred percent. Because again, there are lots of reasons people get vertigo, but a lot of people have found success. So if you've been struggling with vertigo, and you've tried a bunch of different ear, nose, throat doctors, and you're not getting any success, then maybe it's time to go ask the chiropractor. Again, if I was going in, I'd had that X-ray taken first. If a chiropractor's going to see me without that x-ray, I really don't know if I have a problem up there or not. I really don't know if this is the issue or not. So, this is one of those cases where I pretty much want that x-ray taken. And again, have your chiropractor take that x-ray, because there's certain angles that we want, that the other doctors don't understand how we do things, and they might not get the right imaging, and have to end up redoing it anyways. No different than when I x-rayed my shoulder here, went to the orthopedic doctor, he took all new X-rays anyways, because he knew what he wanted versus what I took, the standard X-rays. So make sure you check with your chiropractor first. Alright, that's all I have for today. So if you have any more questions or comments, or if you have a question that you'd like to hear me answer, just go to rockforddc.com. R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com and you can leave me a message there. Also, when you go there, if you look under my blog section, you can see over two years worth of these videos I've done. Maybe that's a topic I haven't hit on, and you don't want a wait for me to answer you. You might find out I've already answered this for somebody else. Thanks everybody.